During Governor Allen’s tenure, prisons in Virginia have
become even tougher, and have earned a reputation for being one of the most
severe systems in the United States. Over-incarceration has contributed to this
reputation and has serious consequences for communities and taxpayers in
Virginia. The increased use of incarceration has been justified by the goal of
reducing crime through the incapacitation of law-breakers. However, this comes
at the expense of disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and
African-American youth.

The brief reports that the cost to incarcerate a young
person in a juvenile facility is approximately $100,000 per year. Virginia’s
policies on juvenile justice falls behind those of other states; youth as young
as 14 year- old can be transferred to criminal court for certain offenses, and
in some cases, the transfer is automatic. According to the brief, Virginia is
unnecessarily transferring many of these youth to adult court: a majority of
these adolescents do not receive sentences requiring placement in adult prison.

In honoring and remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
Alexander asked, “What does Dr. King’s dream mean in an era of mass
incarceration?” Here Alexander is eluding to the fact that 65 million people in
this country have been branded as criminals and stripped of their human rights
that they supposedly won in the civil rights movement. Alexander outlined key
points of her book, which illuminates how mass incarceration has specifically marked
African-American men as permanent second class citizens through the "War on drugs."

Alexander concluded with the opinion that any successful
path to racial justice in the criminal justice system must include those
individuals that have been marked as “guilty.” She stated, “We need to create an underground railroad for
people released from prison and lead them back to good jobs, good homes and a
better life, but we have to be willing to work for the abolition of this system
of mass incarceration in America.”